9781422284445

SYRIA

SYRIA

Anne Marie Sullivan

Mason Crest Philadelphia

Mason Crest 450 Parkway Drive, Suite D

Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com

©2016 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval

system, without permission from the publisher. Printed and bound in the United States of America. CPSIA Compliance Information: Batch #MNMME2016. For further information, contact Mason Crest at 1-866-MCP-Book. First printing 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN: 978-1-4222-3451-8 (hc) ISBN: 978-1-4222-8444-5 (ebook)

Major Nations of the Modern Middle East series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3438-9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction..........................................7 Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D. Syria’s Place in the World ...................13 The Land ............................................19 History................................................31 The Economy, Politics, and Religion....69 The People ..........................................85 Communities ......................................97 Foreign Relations ..............................105 Chronology .......................................116 Series Glossary .................................120 Further Reading................................121 Internet Resources............................122 Index ................................................123 Contributors .....................................128

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Afghanistan Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan The Kurds

Lebanon Pakistan The Palestinians Saudi Arabia Syria Turkey

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Introduction by Camille Pecastaing, Ph.D.

O il shocks, wars, terrorism, nuclear prolifera- tion, military and autocratic regimes, ethnic and religious violence, riots and revolutions are the most frequent headlines that draw attention to the Middle East. The region is also identified with Islam, often in unflattering terms. The creed is seen

as intolerant and illiberal, oppressive of women and minorities. There are concerns that violence is not only endemic in the region, but also follows migrants overseas. All clichés contain a dose of truth, but that truth needs to be placed in its proper context. The turbulences visited upon the Middle East that grab the headlines are only the symptoms of a deep social phenomenon: the demographic transition. This transition happens once in the life of a society. It is the transition from the agrarian to the industrial age, from rural to urban life, from illiteracy to mass education, all of which supported by massive population growth. It is this transition that fueled the recent development of East Asia, leading to rapid social and eco- nomic modernization and to some form of democratization there. It is the same transition that, back in the 19th century, inspired nationalism and socialism in Europe, and that saw the excesses of imperialism, fascism, and Marxist-Leninism. The demographic tran- sition is a period of high risks and great opportunities, and the chal- lenge for the Middle East is to fall on the right side of the sword. In 1950, the population of the Middle East was about 100 mil- lion; it passed 250 million in 1990. Today it exceeds 400 million, to

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I NTRODUCTION

reach about 700 million by 2050. The growth of urbanization is rapid, and concentrated on the coasts and along the few rivers. 1950 Cairo, with an estimated population of 2.5 million, grew into Greater Cairo, a metropolis of about 18 million people. In the same period, Istanbul went from one to 14 million. This expanding populace was bound to test the social system, but regimes were unwilling to take chances with the private sector, reserving for the state a prominent place in the economy. That model failed, population grew faster than the economy, and stress fractures already appeared in the 1970s, with recurrent riots following IMF adjustment programs and the emergence of radical Islamist movements. Against a backdrop of mil- itary coups and social unrest, regimes consolidated their rule by subsidizing basic commodities, building up patronage networks (with massive under-employment in a non-productive public sector), and cementing autocratic practices. Decades of continuity in politi- cal elites between 1970 and 2010 gave the impression that they had succeeded. The Arab spring shattered that illusion. The Arab spring exposed a paradox that the Middle East was both one, yet also diverse. Arab unity was apparent in the contagion: societies inspired other societies in a revolutionary wave that engulfed the region yet remained exclusive to it. The rebellious youth was the same; it watched the same footage on al Jazeera and turned to the same online social networks. The claims were the same: less corruption, less police abuse, better standards of living, and off with the tyrants. In some cases, the struggle was one: Syria became a global battlefield, calling young fighters from all around the region to a common cause. But there were differences in the way states fared during the Arab spring. Some escaped unscathed; some got by with a burst of public spending or a sprinkling of democratic reforms, and others yet collapsed into civil wars. The differential resilience of the regimes owes to both the strength and cohesiveness

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I NTRODUCTION

of the repressive apparatus, and the depth of the fiscal cushion they could tap into to buy social peace. Yemen, with a GDP per capita of $4000 and Qatar, at $94,000, are not the same animal. It also became apparent that, despite shared frustrations and a common cause, protesters and insurgents were extremely diverse. Some embraced free-market capitalism, while others clamored for state welfare to provide immediate improvements to their stan- dards of living. Some thought in terms of country, while other ques- tioned that idea. The day after the Arab spring, everyone looked to democracy for solutions, but few were prepared to invest in the grind of democratic politics. It also quickly became obvious that the com- petition inherent in democratic life would tear at the social fabric. The few experiments with free elections exposed the formidable polarization between Islamists and non-Islamists. Those modern cleavages paralleled ancient but pregnant divisions. Under the Ottoman Millet system, ethnic and sectarian communities had for centuries coexisted in relative, self-governed segregation. Those communities remained a primary feature of social life, and in a dense, urbanized environment, fractures between Christians and Muslims, Shi’as and Sunnis, Arabs and Berbers, Turks and Kurds were combustible. Autocracy had kept the genie of divisiveness in the bottle. Democracy unleashed it. This does not mean democracy has to forever elude the region, but that in countries where the state concentrates both political and economic power, elections are a polarizing zero-sum game—even more so when public patronage has to be cut back because of chron- ic budget deficits. The solution is to bring some distance between the state and the national economy. If all goes well, a growing private sector would absorb the youth, and generate taxes to balance state budgets. For that, the Middle East needs just enough democracy to mitigate endemic corruption, to protect citizens from abuse and

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I NTRODUCTION

extortion, and to allow greater transparency over public finances and over licensing to crony privateers. Better governance is necessary but no sufficient. The region still needs to figure out a developmental model and find its niche in the global economy. Unfortunately, the timing is not favorable. Mature economies are slow growing, and emerging markets in Asia and Africa are generally more competitive than the Middle East. To suc- ceed, the region has to leverage its assets, starting with its geo- graphic location between Europe, Africa, and Asia. Regional busi- nesses and governments are looking to anchor themselves in south- south relationships. They see the potential clientele of hundreds of millions in Africa and South Asia reaching middle class status, many of whom Muslim. The Middle East can also count on its vast sources of energy, and on the capital accumulated during years of high oil prices. Financial investments in specific sectors, like trans- port, have already made local companies like Emirates Airlines and DP World global players. With the exception of Turkey and Israel, the weakness is human capital, which is either unproductive for lack of adequate education, or uncompetitive, because wage expectations in the region are rela- tively higher than in other emerging economies. The richer Arab countries have worked around the problem by importing low-skilled foreign labor—immigrants who notoriously toil for little pay and even less protection. In parallel, they have made massive investments in higher education, so that the productivity of their native workforce eventually reaches the compensations they expect. For lack of capi- tal, the poorer Arab countries could not follow that route. Faced with low capitalization, sticky wages and high unemployment, they have instead allowed a shadow economy to grow. The arrangement keeps people employed, if at low levels of productivity, and in a manner that brings no tax revenue to the state.

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I NTRODUCTION

Overall, the commerce of the region with the rest of the world is unhealthy. Oil exporters tend to be one-product economies highly vulnerable to fluctuations in global prices. Labor-rich countries depend too much on remittances from workers in the European Union and the oil-producing countries of the Gulf. Some of the excess labor has found employment in the jihadist sector, a high-risk but up and coming industry which pays decent salaries. For the poorer states of the region, jihadists are the ticket to foreign strategic rent. The Middle East got a taste for it in the early days of the Cold War, when either superpower provided aid to those who declared them- selves in their camp. Since then, foreign strategic rent has come in many forms: direct military aid, preferential trade agreements, loan guarantees, financial assistance, or aid programs to cater to refugee populations. Rent never amounts to more than a few percentage points of GDP, but it is often enough to keep entrenched regimes in power. Dysfunction becomes self-perpetuating: pirates and jihadists, famine and refugees, all bear promises of aid to come from concerned distant powers. Reforms lose their urgency. Turkey and Israel have a head start on the path to modernization and economic maturity, but they are, like the rest of the Middle East, consumed in high stakes politics that hinder their democratic life. Rather than being models that would lift others, they are virtu- ally outliers disconnected from the rest of the region. The clock is ticking for the Middle East. The window of opportunity from the demographic transition will eventually close. Fertility is already dropping, and as the current youth bulge ages it will become a bur- den on the economy. The outlook for capital is also bleak. Oil is already running out for the smaller producers, all the while global prices are pushed downwards by the exploitation of new sources. The Middle East has a real possibility to break the patterns of the past, but the present is when the transition should occur.

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A member of the Free Syrian Army stands in a rebel-controlled area of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, in 2014. Since 2011, Syria has been engaged in a civil war between rebel and government forces. By February 2015, more than 220,000 peo- ple had been killed in the conflict.

I n March of 2011, a group of Syrian students was arrested in the southern city of Daraa for writing political graffiti on walls, including the statement “Down with the regime.” The students were inspired by protests in other Middle Eastern countries that had begun a few months earlier, aimed at improving the political circumstances and living conditions of the Arab people. It was perhaps not surprising that the Arab Spring protests should spread to the Syrian Arab Republic. It was also not surpris- ing that the students would soon be arrested and jailed by Syrian authorities. Over the past 40 years, Syria has gained a reputation as one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world. R EPRESSIVE R ULE IN S YRIA Syria rests on the far eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea in an region sometimes called the Levant, from a French word meaning “sunrise.” To people in the Mediterranean region, the day dawns Syria’s Place in the World

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S YRIA 14

over Syria. And in many ways, the world we know today dawned in ancient Syria. This region was the site of much of the ancient world’s traffic, as travelers frequently passed through going from one place to another. This position at the world’s crossroads deeply influenced Syria’s history and culture. Today, the remains of Syria’s rich and glorious past can be seen in the ruins and archaeological sites throughout the country, which reveal layer after layer of civi- lization. During the 1970s, a brutal dictator named Hafez al-Assad seized power in Syria through a coup . Once he gained power, Hafez al- Assad did not hesitate to use that power to crush anyone whom he thought posed a threat to his regime. For example, the Assad gov- ernment responded to a 1982 protest in the city of Hama by send- ing in military troops who massacred approximately 25,000 civil- ians. Internationally, Assad joined Egypt in waging a surprise attack against Israel in October 1973, and sent Syrian troops to intervene in a civil war in neighboring Lebanon in 1976; those troops allowed Syria to effectively control Lebanon for the next three decades. Syria’s poor human-rights record, as well as its sup- port for terrorist organizations led the United States to break off diplomatic relations, impose economic sanctions , and list the country as a “state sponsor of terrorism” in 1979.

Words to Understand in This Chapter

coup— short for coup d’etat, the sudden illegal overthrow of one government for another, usually by means of force. economic sanctions— penalties imposed by one country on another, in an effort to weaken the economy of the targeted nation. This, it is hoped, will make the targeted country change policies or behaviors that are considered undesirable or detrimental to the targeting nation.